How sharing the catch can be good for both fisherfolk and fish

Following years of dismal reports about collapsing fish stocks and failed fisheries management, scientists just reported that they have discovered how to reverse the trend: Give fishermen exclusive rights to a portion of the catch.

The approach runs contrary to prevailing notions of cutthroat economic competition evident in, for example, "Deadliest Catch." But a team of ecologists and economists say that sharing, rather than competing, can make fishing safer, preserve fish populations and even help stocks recover.

The Alaskan king crab fishery switched over to "individual fishing quotas" several years ago, following the success stories of Alaskan halibut and pollock and other fisheries in New Zealand and Iceland -- where shares of the catch have been parceled out to existing fishermen, permitting them to fill their quotas in a more rational way.

Scientists predicted that if overfishing, pollution and habitat destruction continued unabated, all of the world's fisheries would collapse by 2048. A fishery is considered collapsed if catches fall to 10% of historic highs.

But the small fraction of those fisheries -- 121 to be exact -- that switched to individual quotas were only half as likely to collapse, according to the study led by Christopher Costello, a resource economist at UC Santa Barbara.

Costello said he was surprised to find that the data showed such clear support for a fundamental tenet of resource economics: A change in incentives can remove the motivation to out-compete someone else and switch to longer-term conservation.

The study's authors acknowledge that catch shares are not a panacea. They also noted that such quotas don't have to be doled out to individual fishermen but can be allocated to fishing cooperatives or communities.

The Alaskan halibut fishery has become the poster child for how the system can work well. It has gone from a deadly race to fish over a few days to a leisurely quota system that has delivered a steady supply of fresh halibut to restaurants and seafood cases and given fishermen more money per pound of fish.

The switch has transformed Dutch Harbor , America 's biggest seafood port, from a seasonal work camp to a year-round town with so many families it needs to build a second school, according to Mayor Shirley Marquardt.

"This used to be a town on steroids," Marquardt said. Businesses would work to exhaustion for a few weeks a year, importing workers for the brief season.

Now catches of crab, halibut and pollock arrive on staggered schedules, resulting in less waste of fish, said Sinclair Wilt, who runs a processing plant here for Alyeska Seafoods Inc. The short-term jobs have evolved into longer-term employment.